News & Analysis

Performance Based Value: Kansas City Chiefs

By Khaled Elsayed &bullet;
Feb 28, 2013

In this series of pieces, Pro Football Focus is hammering into the value of players. To us it’s a “Performance Based Value” number, telling you what players were worth (by our grading) in 2012. You can read about the work we’ve done to create it here, but in short:

• It’s solely about what a player did on the field in 2012• Players are grouped by positions so their play essentially earns them a portion of the positional salary pool• It’s all about cap hits (these values are approximate)

Here are 2012′s most undervalued and overvalued Kansas City Chiefs:

(* Denotes player missed significant portion of time through injury)

Undervalued

1. Justin Houston, Linebacker

Come the end of the year the Pro Bowl was busy recognizing Tamba Hali, but for those in the know Hali wasn’t even the best outside linebacker on his own team. No, that was Houston who had his own breakout year that saw him turn his 339 pass rushing opportunities into 44 quarterback disruptions. He was more than just a pass rusher though (he would rush the passer on only 66.7% of passing plays), with his all-around play ensuring that he would finish fourth overall in our 3-4 outside linebacker rankings.

It’s amazing to think that a proven commodity such as Johnson would cost so little against the cap. One of the most consistently excellent inside linebackers in the league, he followed up his superb 2011 with another superb 2012 where he would finish fourth overall in our inside linebacker rankings. That’s ahead of guys like NaVorro Bowman and Luke Kuechly, for those keeping score. His ability against the run — his 60 defensive stops were more than all of his peers — was especially impressive.

With such a horrible passing attack creating a woeful offense, it went unnoticed just how well the Kansas City offensive line played. Chief — pun intended — among those was Asamoah, who finished the year our sixth-highest ranked right guard as he built on a solid 2011 to make a bigger impact in the run game. He’s putting himself in position for a very healthy next deal.

You know what you’re going to get with Hali. He’ll generate plenty of pressure and struggle in the run game. Only this year, while he managed the bad run defense part, the “plenty of pressure” aspect wasn’t really forthcoming. Indeed, he would finish only 10th in our Pass Rushing Productivity ranking of all 3-4 outside linebackers — not really keeping up his end of the deal. We’ve seen him produce in the past, but that 2010 seems a long time ago now.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the Chiefs haven’t exactly got a return on their investment in Jackson. In 2011 he at least contributed some fine work in the run game, but that was gone this year and instead the Chiefs were left with a defensive player who picked up seven combined sacks, hits and hurries on 275 pass rushes, good for the worst Pass Rushing Productivity score of all 3-4 defensive ends.

Dorsey was well on his way to his seemingly usual year of good run defense, bad pass rushing. Then injury struck and Dorsey would get on the field for only 115 snaps. Would he have represented good value for money without the injury? Highly unlikely. However, he wouldn’t have proven such a waste of cap space.

It’s almost impressive how much money the Chiefs were able to waste. In some regards they were still reeling from injuries that meant Eric Berry didn’t look at his best, but the failures of high draft picks such as Jackson and Dorsey, along with the money given to Stanford Routt are big examples of why this team is in full rebuild mode.Follow Khaled on Twitter: @PFF_Khaled